Yea no kidding. This game is starting to get more grinding then a dance floor on prom night.

What exact;y do you need to grind to play the game?
You can run any dungeon in explorable mode with rare quality gear without having any issues whatsoever. But if its really a bother Exotics can be acquired in a day or two.
In sPvP gear doesn't matter. In WvWvW it rarely matters as most of the time you fight in huge numbers but still, getting the need "max" gear ain't hard.
General pve and dynamic events require gear even less as you can run fully equipped in Masterwork items and still perform wonderfully.

Only place gear comes to matter is Fractals dungeon, but that's only on 10++ for exotics and 20++ for ascended. But to be fair, if you don't find it fun to play the dungeon then there is no need to actually do it No point in reaching better dungeon lvl if its not fun for you.

And there we go. If things as prestige and legendaries are on your list then its a terrible reason and all that is your own choice and no one is making you grind for better looking pants.

Or am I missing something? I'm slowly going for my legendary but I haven't seen a single thing I would be required to grind for if I didn't want to myself.

So I went and looked up the OP's profile on GW1Guru. He started playing at the end of September 2010. OP, that was a little less than a month before I started playing in October 2010. I have 50/50 in my HoM - you have 26/50. I have my GWAMM. Do you? Nope.

You see, by your own logic, you're obviously not a "true" Guild Wars fan... otherwise, you'd have been working harder to get 50/50 and GWAMM. Right?

You came here last month looking for help to take you from 15/50 to 30/50. You complained that all of your "old farms" had been nerfed - which suggests you took a break from playing GW1 in the under two years you've been playing.

So please do explain to those of us who worked our tails off getting 50/50 and GWAMM why you are such a special snowflake that you get to complain that other people might someday decide to go back and play GW1 and earn the rewards that you couldn't be arsed to earn until a month or two before launch. And even though they have spent the last 6+ months basically handing out titles via consumable drops, the Survivor nerf and the addition of higher level quests to pre-searing (thus eliminating the need to death level), you still couldn't seem to take advantage of ANY of those adjustments to obtain your drunk, sweet, party, survivor or LDoA titles.

Are you seeing your own hypocrisy yet?

Incidentally, when that interview you quoted was done, ANet was expecting to be in beta by 2008. I'm fairly certain it's 2012 now.

Things change. Plans change. It doesn't mean ANet did it out of greed... I actually find that somewhat unlikely. Opening up HoM rewards to ANYONE who earns them fits in perfectly with their overall gaming philosophy.

TL;DR: You are no more in a position to claim "special snowflake" status than a guy/gal who picks up GW1 after GW2 launches and works their tail off to earn their HoM rewards. Your own lack of effort towards those goals, right up to the last minute, makes you no "better" than the people you're complaining about.

I still feel that GW1 players, TRUE GW1 players, should get at least SOMETHING for showing their dedication. No GW1 players, no GW2. Simple as that. But hey WoW fanboys, come join our game with your piss-poor attitudes, judge it to WoW constantly and get EVERYTHING a person can get, you know, one of those people that decided to play our game instead of the highly popular WoW and stick with us for 7 years. You can EVERYTHING. Just buy our game for about 1/10th of the price they bought it for, have them help you ingame because we decided to stop making content to keep them playing for any other reason, and earn absolutely everything while our fanboys (not fans) say it's completely okay because they've been brown nosing us for about 2 years now when we started talking about GW2 in full.

There is no such thing as true guild wars 1 fans. Everyone that play guild wars 1 is a guild wars 1 veteran it doesn't matter their reason for buying the game.

Honestly, a true fan wouldn't be saying what you are saying because the memories and all the fun you had playing the game back at its peak should have been sufficient. The fact that they gave you something to help you remember is just a bonus. Admittedly it was probably to drum up sales for guild wars 1, but since I had already played the game, all those memories are not suddenly going to be bad because some random person decided to play 6 years later for the rewards.

My point being a TRUE guild wars 1 fan will cherish the memories they had playing the game, a WHINING ENTITLED fan will demand special treatment for playing a game for fun.

So when you meet people it's not you talking to them, it's your character or 'minion'?

My characters are me, not in any rp way. Just simply me playing a game and when i talk to other people i don't talk to their characters or 'minions' i am talking to them (edit: i should clarify, usually this involves calling them by their online name, but doesn't mean i think of them as anything other than other people playing a game) . I thought most people saw it this way? I guess maybe not going off this thread.

I know this is not the case anymore but i can't stop feeling a bit surprised when i see a girl that enjoy gaming.

*chuckling* If you'll notice, a significant portion of the people responding to this thread are women talking about playing with their partners/families. I've actually got a son your age - and I'm the one who led my kids over to the dark side. LOL

A lot of the women I know that game don't admit to being women while playing. It's never bothered me to do so... mentioning that I'm old enough to be their mom usually puts a stop to most of the nonsense. *grins* But I totally understand why some of my younger friends (including two of my nieces) just don't admit to being female except to very close friends & guildies.

It may be one of the advantages to gaming as a couple/family... there's a lot less obnoxiousness if you can say "Oh, let me introduce you to my spouse/partner/kids."

We had a funny situation in GW1 where some guy was pretty persistently "flirting" with me in open chat. I usually try the gentle approach first, so I said something like, "you're going to make my husband jealous LOL" We were in Witman's Folly, and he said, "well since there's no one here but you, me and that girl by the chest... he doesn't have to know."

I'm a bit disappointed in the fact that the weapons/armor are just skins, and really not as nice as some of the weapons/armor I saw in beta weekends.

I take it you aren't a long-time GW1 player. The nostalgia value of some of these skins for GW1 players is serious. The Fiery Dragon Sword and Fellblade in particular, are iconic and long-coveted weapons from a game some of us played for over seven years.

Map completion is not an achievement. It's the one thing other than character level that's apparently important enough to appear on character resumés.

And it does mean something else: it means big wads of cash, transmutation stones, stacks of crafting materials, and who knows what other tangible rewards.

Why not keep them relevant to the map they're on? I can only answer that with a question of my own: Why do they need to be relevant at all? It's gimmicky easter egg-like content (the jumpy ones anyway) that has absolutely nothing to do with any other aspect of gameplay. How does it accomplish anything other than making you look like an idiot? If i wander around the ruins of Ascalon and find a crumbling stone arch, any sane person would consider the arch located and the area explored. It takes a special kind of moron to be overcome with the urge to jump to the top of it, while there's a war going on around you.

By the way, a few weeks ago I already argued in favor of just ungrouping the different kinds of activities entirely, and rewarding each category separately. Vistas and hearts have nothing to do with each other, why would they need to be grouped? Separation would change nothing for people who want to do everything anyway, they'd get the same net reward, and the same sum total of achievements. People not interested in any particular activity would enjoy a greater freedom to play the game and still receive rewards for the things they do have fun with. Isn't that what they keep telling us this game is about? Having fun? The way things are now, there will always be people popping out of the woodwork complaining about grind, because they don't like hearts, because they don't like vistas, etc. etc. ANet should just do themselves a favor and preempt that.

It isn't.

Well it's not progression either. You don't have to do it. Map completion isn't mandatory and the reasons you say you don't want vistas a part of it leads me to believe you feel otherwise. Yes the point is to have fun, but why bring that up? It's irrelevant. How is not being able to get 100% completion hindering your ability to have fun? You can still have fun without doing everything. You don't have to do everything in the game, but you have to do most things to make progress. You can still progress and feel accomplished if you never even find a single vista. There are other ways to achieve the rewards that map completion gives you so you're not forced to do anything. If you want 100% map completion, you have to complete everything there is to do on the map. Just because you don't like having to do something doesn't mean it should be excluded. Just because I don't like tasks doesn't mean they should remove tasks from map completion. And if people aren't able to complete absolutely everything on the map? That's just how it works. Some people will never unlock all the pvp rewards, some people will never unlock all the pve rewards. That's just how it is, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Other games have suffered from giving content rewards away, in response they had to create a lot of easy content rather than a satisfying amount of challenging content that gives the player a real goal. I prefer the NES approach over the modern MMO approach.

Funniest part is, this argument wouldn't even be happening if vistas were in the game from the beginning; people are just upset that they became mandatory after the fact.